Fade to Black (33 page)

He obliges, handing her the slicker and the roses.

“Careful,” he warns, “they have thorns.”

She sees that these roses, their prickery canes wrapped in several layers of damp paper towels, aren’t the perfect, long-stemmed florist variety; rather, they’re the rambling, sweet-smelling blooms that seem to grow wild over fences and trellises in Windmere Cove.

“I just cut them from my yard,” Harper tells her, swiping at the water droplets that are clinging to his damp, dark, unruly hair.

“That was so sweet.” Her casual tone doesn’t betray the way her heart has leapt from its perch at his words.

He cut them himself
.

He did that for me
.

This strapping man’s man went out into his yard and he cut a bunch of roses for me
.

She hangs the coat over a chair, not caring that it will make a puddle on the hardwood floor.

“I’ve always liked to give a lady flowers. And you deserve them today, more than anyone I’ve ever known,” Harper says with a shrug.

She remembers the floral arrangement he’d had delivered yesterday, the one she’d had Frank Minelli destroy.

She feels sick inside at the thought of how mistaken she’d been—about both men. Sick about what had almost happened…

“Have you heard anything about Frank Minelli?” Harper asks. “Did he confess?”

“Not to all of it, no. He’s claiming he had no idea who I was—he just knew that I had been the actress in that sleazy movie....” She trails off uncomfortably, shifting her gaze away from Harper’s.

Babie Love. She told him at some point last night, as they sat on the uncomfortable bench at the police station, drinking cold, bitter coffee and waiting to be questioned again, about doing that film.

She had told him how uncomfortable she’d been with the nudity but how desperate for money and a “real” acting job. She had also told him about Brawley, how he had tricked her into making the film.

“Sounds like a really wonderful guy,” Harper had said, shaking his head. “What kind of bastard would do something like that to a kid?”

“I wasn’t a kid....”

“You were eighteen. A kid.”

Her reaction to the disgust on his face?

Don’t do this
, she had found herself begging him silently.
Don’t show me how different you are from him. Don’t make me wonder what it would be like to be with someone like you, someone who would look out for me, care about what happens to me
.

“So Minelli’s claiming he didn’t know you were Mallory Eden, huh? I wonder how long he’ll hold out,” Harper is saying.

She turns her attention back to the conversation, back to his handsome face, the concern in his green eyes.

“He’s been trying to get through to me all morning, through his lawyer,” she tells Harper. “I don’t know what he wants to talk to me about.”

“You haven’t spoken to him?”

“No.” She shudders. “I never want to see him again; I don’t even want to hear his voice over the telephone. His lawyer keeps calling, telling me how bad Frank feels.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Harper says, briefly placing a hand on her arm.

When he moves it away, she fights the urge to grab on to it, to grab on to him.

“What?” he asks, staring at her as though he’s read her mind.

“I … nothing,” she tells him, looking away.

There’s a knock on the front door just then, followed by a mad scrambling among the lawmen in the room before it’s opened warily.

Another police officer enters, and Mallory sighs.

“Who else would they be expecting, now that Frank is in custody?” Harper asks her.

She looks incredulously at him. “The press.”

“Oh. Right. Do you know how easy it is to see you standing there in a T-shirt and jeans and forget that you’re this big movie star, that you’re this huge, internationally significant story?”

“I wish I could forget.”

“So … what are you going to do now? Go back to L.A., pick up where you left off?”

His tone is casual, but the expression in his green eyes is anything but that.

This is insane, Mallory thinks, that this man—a virtual stranger—means anything to her. She has known him only a few days, and had spent most of that time fearing him, trying to escape him.

But she can’t forget the way he fought valiantly to save her last night; the way he comforted the children afterward; the way he submitted without complaint to the endless questioning from detectives; the way he insisted on waiting with her at the police station until close to dawn, when they allowed her to leave; how he had called after her as she was led out to a waiting squad car, flanked by several cops and holding her rain jacket over her head to hide her face from the dozens of press cameras, “I’ll phone you in the morning.”

And he
had
phoned.

And now he’s there, standing at her side, making her feel safer by his very presence than any of this security force, with their watchful eyes and their ready weapons.

But there’s nothing left to fear.

It’s over.

As Harper said, Frank is in custody.

Why can’t she get past the nagging sense of doubt that her worries are over?

Because it’s been so long
, she tells herself.
After so many years of living in fear, you’re not going to just let go of it that easily
.

“Ms. Eden?”

Ms. Eden …

How long has it been since somebody called her that? The name comes zinging back from the past, making her pause momentarily before glancing up to see the newly arrived police officer standing before her, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Yes?” she asks, a tremble in her voice.

“We’ve taken down several messages for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“There have been calls for you at the police station. Your number is unlisted—”

“It is, but believe me—I know from past experience that it’s only a matter of time before it gets out,” she says, shaking her head.

“Well, calls are coming in from around the country. Apparently, quite a few people are trying to get a hold of you. Police headquarters is apparently the only place they can think of trying.”

“Who’s calling?” she asks, suddenly bone-weary, and not just from the lack of sleep.

“Mostly, the press,” he tells her, confirming her suspicions. “We’ve fielded those calls. And there were dozens of fans—most of them men. But,” he adds, “we did take down several names and numbers from people who claimed to be personal acquaintances of yours, people who said you’d want to hear from them.”

“Who are they?” She reaches for the sheet of paper he’s handed her, scanning the list of names from the distant past, names that whisk her back over the years to another time, another place … another life.

A life she isn’t so sure she wants back.

Flynn Soderland
.

Brawley Johnson
.

Rae Hamilton
.

Gretchen Dodd
.

Becky O’Neal
.

T
he phone rings, and Rae Hamilton jumps to answer it.

Mallory … it has to be Mallory
.

But it isn’t.

It’s Flynn.

“Have you heard from her yet?” he wants to know, his voice edgy.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

Rae hears him exhale sharply and wonders if he’s smoking a cigarette, or simply sighing.

“We should go to her,” Rae says, and bites her lip. “If she doesn’t call us. She shouldn’t be alone through all of this.”

“she’s been alone for five years, Rae. By choice.”

“I know, but … I just hate to think of what she might be going through, Flynn.”

“Well, so do I.”

Rae toys with the plastic ring on the neck of the bottle of spring water she’d been drinking from. “Do you think she’ll call?”

“Eventually. When she’s ready.”

“Do you think she’ll come back?”

“Back, what?” Flynn asks. “Back to L.A.? Back into our lives? Back to acting?”

She hesitates, then says, “All of the above.”

Flynn is silent for a moment. “There’s no way of knowing, Rae. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

What he doesn’t say, what’s on both of their minds, is that there’ll be no need for Martin de Lisser to cast Rae as “the new Mallory Eden …”

Not if the old Mallory Eden comes back.

G
retchen sits in her window, staring out at the backyard, at the tiresome, familiar view that is all she’s seen for five years now.

She’s sick of the same old overgrown rhododendron shrubs, the drab chain-link fence, the whiny kids next door, their monstrosity of a swingset.

Sick of sitting there alone, day in and day out, while the world keeps spinning around her.

Sick of her mother’s worried hovering, of the flavorless food and halfhearted encouragement she tries to force on Gretchen, and her talk of the senior citizens wasting away in the nursing home where she works.

Gretchen has no sympathy for any of them, the ancient geezers who have lived long, full lives.

She doesn’t want to hear—via her sympathetic mother—their complaints about being widowed, or about their children and grandchildren not calling, or about not being able to get around anymore, or about being wrinkled and gray.

Gretchen will never have a husband.

Will never have a family of her own.

She will never get out into the world again.

And being wrinkled and gray sounds like a picnic compared to being twenty-seven years old and so hideously deformed that children run screaming in the opposite direction.

This is her life, right here.

Isolated from the world.

The irony is that she has been living just as Mallory Eden had apparently lived these past five years, and less than fifty miles away.

Mallory, like Gretchen, had been a prisoner of the past, forced to hide from strangers’ prying gazes.

Would she return Gretchen’s phone call?

Would she dare to confront the woman whose life she had ruined?

Would she agree to pay for a consultation with Dr. Reed Dalton, the plastic surgeon whose fees were astronomical, but who had told Gretchen that there’s hope …

Hope she had long ago given up.

Would Mallory Eden spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to reconstruct Gretchen Dodd’s face again?

That would remain to be seen.

For now, Gretchen can do nothing but wait.

And stare out the window.

“M
s. Eden? Somebody’s here to see you.”

Mallory looks up at the young police officer, the one who had been stationed at the back door.

“Who is it?” she asks, setting her glass of iced tea on the table and standing.

“It’s me.” Pamela Minelli steps into the kitchen.

Her pretty, chubby face bears the evidence of too many tears and too little sleep, and her blond hair is matted, as though it had gotten damp in the rain that had ended earlier, and Pamela hadn’t bothered to brush it.

She’s wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants and an immense sweatshirt that must belong to her husband, the way the sleeves hang over her hands. The oversized clothing gives her a little-girl-lost appearance.

“Where are the kids?” is all Mallory can think of to say to her neighbor.

“They’re home, with my mom and dad. I reached them in Maine last night and they drove down to be with us.”

“That’s good.”

Pamela nods.

“How are you?” Mallory asks after an awkward moment of silence.

She knows the question is a mistake as soon as it’s out of her mouth, but she can’t take it back.

There is a flicker of anger in Pamela’s red-rimmed eyes, and then, surprisingly, it vanishes.

She doesn’t lash out, doesn’t say, “How the hell do you
think
I am?”

She just shrugs and says, so quietly Mallory can hardly hear her, “Surviving. So far.”

Mallory nods.

Pamela stares at her muddy tennis shoes.

Mallory tries to think of something to say, something that isn’t trite or hurtful or depressing.

Her mind is a blank.

“Where’s Harper Smith?” Pamela asks suddenly, looking up.

“He went home to get some sleep.”

“How long have you two been seeing each other?”

“Oh … we’re not … we’re not really seeing each other. I mean … he’s a friend.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

Then Pamela sighs.

Mallory looks out the window over the sink, at the sky that has gradually been clearing all afternoon.

Pamela clears her throat.